Driving home from Durham last night my car began making a rather unpleasant noise, a sort of harsh scraping noise that appeared to be coming from the front driver’s side wheel. I wondered if it was a brake sticking. When I stopped in Bishop Auckland for petrol I gave the wheel as good hard kick in the hope that it would solve the problem, lacking the hammer that my hero Jeremy Clarkson would inevitably have used.
I set off again and the noise persisted. I tried shouting at it, but the noise still persisted! Finally I turned up the car stereo and drowned it out. That seemed to work. It was still there, of course, but I couldn’t hear it, which seemed a good temporary solution. Towards the end of the journey, however, as I left the M6 motorway the noise became louder and louder and was starting to sound expensive.
What I should have done, of course, is pull over and let National Breakdown bring me home.
This morning I took the car to the local garage I use, where the mechanics are good and sensible prices are charged. The result was that not only had the wheel bearing collapsed but the wheel hub was damaged as well and needed replacing. Ooops! Fortunately, because the garage owner is wonderful I got the repair done today; and at a very reasonable price.
This whole escapade has made me think about the things in life we sometimes ignore and the stupidity of doing so. We ignore, for example, the fire alarm that is sounding because we think it is a drill or that somebody has set it off by mistake. We ignore safety notices because we tend to think it’s yet another example of our out of control health and safety culture. We ignore warning signs that something might be wrong with our health. I could continue….
Perhaps the most serious warnings we ignore are those in the Bible. Jesus himself gives several warnings. In Mark 13, for example, Jesus gives warnings about the end times, including “Watch out that no-one deceives you.” Elsewhere he says that not everybody who says “Lord, Lord” will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but those who do God’s will. There are many, many more as you will discover if you read any of the four gospels.
Do we take the Biblical warnings seriously or do we ignore them at our peril?
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